the kind of man you are

I read two books recently that have a lot in common: Five Skies by Ron Carlson, and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. They are both powerfully written, though spare. They both resonate with me as a middle-aged man with sons. And they are both difficult to get through, because they portray difficult and depressing stories. To a certain extent, they both still follow a literary formula that dictates that all the struggle and suffering portrayed in the book should amount to something, and give the reader something positive to hold on to after all that emotional investment and pain. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience; though I wouldn't recommend either book to the casual reader looking for easy entertainment.

Five Skies takes three men in various stages of life and puts them together in the open air of an Idaho plateau. They are all at an itinerant point in their lives, for different reasons, and are employed temporarily as builders in a fairly remote location. The oldest of the men, who is in his sixties, has been retained to manage the job; he finds an extremely capable but somewhat indifferent man in his forties, who then suggests they also bring on the youngest of the three, a twenty-something drifter who talks a good game but tends to bolt at any suggestion of responsibility. Over the course of the project we learn more about each man and each one's separate pain. By sharing the work of the planning and construction as well as the remote life of their camp, they grow to trust and appreciate each other and the clear, cold beauty of their surroundings. The book touches on several intensely masculine themes: outdoor living, the mythology of "handy" men and construction, the subtle and silent way men appreciate each other, and the relationship between men of different generations. As their respect for each other grows, so does the reader's emotional involvement in their back stories, daily progress, and camaraderie. Soon we come to realize that the men represent not only relationships of men of different generations, but of fathers and sons. The book builds on these themes slowly and steadily, and while each man has his own tragedy in the past, their shared pain is the culmination of their story.

The Road is set in an extremely bleak version of the present or near-future in which an unexplained apocalypse has ruined the planet and left the surviving population cannibalistic, desperate, and on the verge of extinction. The environment is gray, covered in ash from the original (implied) firestorm and subsequent uncontrollable fires, and inhospitable. Most of the remaining resources have been consumed or hoarded by the survivors. A few individuals mange to coexist but are driven to extreme measures and devolve to little more than animals. Faced with this virtually unbearable scenario, a man and his son try to stay alive while traveling to what they hope will be a more survivable southwestern coast. The man is beaten down by the world as it has become, but insists on continuing to fight toward a more hospitable climate and keep himself and his young son alive in the meantime. His son has never known the world as it was. They suffer terribly, and the boy wonders what the point might be of struggling to continue. The father maintains that he and his son are the "good guys"; however, his remaining goodness applies mainly (if not only) to his unwavering love for his son and his attempt to keep them alive. The man trusts no one and refuses to extend help to anyone along the way, even though his son questions his very humanity if he is not willing to help the other survivors. Unfortunately, the man is proven right time and again when any contact with others becomes a desperate fight for survival. The book mines a depth of faith, love, and loyalty between father and son in a setting of darkness, corruption, and entropy. The payoff could tritely be characterized as bittersweet, and though even at the end McCarthy maintains the overwhelming pallor of darkness, a small light of hope and faith remain.

irony

i·ro·ny [ahy-ruh-nee, ahy-er-]

–noun, plural -nies.

1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.

2. Literature.
a. a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
b. (esp. in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.

3. Socratic irony.

4. dramatic irony.

5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.

6. the incongruity of this.

As we get older the mind spends more time hovering on tiny happy memories, things that we sure as hell didn't appreciate enough when we were in the moment, and can now never recreate or recover. Standing in the shower this morning somehow reminded me of the brief era that I lived in my grandma's beach house and bathed in the ocean pretty much every day. I only showered when I couldn't get away with not showering, or when I had massive amounts of sand in my crevices. Letting my mind linger on this memory of living there was pleasant, though the more I thought about it, the less pleasant it probably should have seemed. My roommate and I never had the heat on because we couldn't afford it. We ate ramen and peanut butter sandwiches like all the other starving students you've ever heard of. I remember being lonely, though I did have friends in town, and I had a couple of girlfriends over the course of that year, and so did my roommate. I worked on the loading dock of the local Orchard Supply Hardware. 'Nuff said about that. My car was a rusted-out '77 Toyota Corolla wagon, though according to my carless roommate, I was lucky to have a car at all. On the plus side, we lived in a house that always had the sound of breaking waves in the background. My roommate was my best friend, at the time. We were creative and irreverent and the shit we collected and plastered all over our house reflected our humor and energy. At one point I tried to carefully and conscientiously paint my car some other color than 70's mustard yellow, but got a wild hair up my butt after I had only finished one quarter panel and ended up using it as a stencil-art/graffitti/guerrilla poetry backdrop instead. In hindsight, I loved that car, no matter that all the empirical evidence available would lead anyone to conclude that it was a piece of utter shit.

I guess it's all relative, which makes me consider that old saw; that you never appreciate how good you have it until you're older. "Youth is wasted on the young," and all that.

I guess the feeling intensifies when the current situation starts to seem like THE outcome of events and not just another segment of the great adventure. Sometimes the reverie over past glories, real or imagined, keeps our current happy moments just slightly out of focus... or out of sight entirely. This is not revelatory. Everybody knows (or is) someone who can't let go of the feeling those memories provide, who can't create something new and good for themselves because they can't get over how great things used to be. The folks at eye magazine (www.eyemagazine.com, issue #68) are running a special edition about their proposed additions to the established "design canon", mainly based on the premise that "history is vital - nostalgia is death."

I am also at an age where I can appreciate the fact that thirty years from now I will probably still be thinking that I didn't know how good I had it. Maybe I'll forget the things that I'm reminiscing about now and long for things that haven't even happened yet. I have sure forgotten a lot of other things up to now that I wish I had back.

Holy crap, I'm wistful about things I can't even remember! That's what we mean when we say we take (or took) things for granted and that our kids don't know how good they have it. They have what we used to have, and we wish we had it back.

lucky bastard

I think the universe is trying to tell me to lighten up.

I have been in a weird place the last couple of days here at the HOW conference. I even posted about negativity, and trying to be positive, or at least trying to be balanced.

Then, somebody I was talking to on the trade show floor GAVE me his Red Sox tickets. I told him I had looked online for tickets but was not finding anything cheap or easy, and he asked if I wanted to see the game anyway. He went away for a sec and came back with two tickets to last nights' game. Weelll, in case you live under a rock: Jon Lester pitched a no-hitter last night. First lefty since 1956. The Sox won 7-0. Jason Varitek caught his 4th no-hitter, a record. It was very exciting! It's my first visit to Boston, my first time at Fenway. The place and fans rock. They are insane. It's funny to see the main badge of honor among fans: a Sox ballcap so old and raggedy it's not even blue any more. The wearer is obviously a die-hard. And there are tons of them.

So, since then I have felt a little brighter, a little better, and have been jotting things in my notebook that have a more hopeful tone. I will post some of those notes a bit later.

Thank you, universe!

treading water, breathing fire

I have been accused of being too negative. I observe what's going on around me and laugh at it, deride it, poke holes in it, step on it. It's a deep-seated insecurity, I know. I KNOW. Like everyone else I want something to look forward to, something to inspire me. I judge constantly, but also judge myself and try to do better. I have described my crisis of confidence a bit; my ongoing internal dialogue continues to rise and fall, sway and turn, between seeking the positive and finding the negative. I have been accused of being too negative, and I have no excuse. However, I wonder: how can we discern the positive if we don't examine the negative? Besides, what does my personal disapproval of something I see as selfish, hypocritical, depressing, stupid or wrong have to do with anyone else's personal assessment? I guess a lot, if their personal assessment also uses my thoughts as part of the analysis.

I am going on 40 years old and I am still unsatisfied with life. Is that wrong? Maybe, if I don't work to discover a path that will help me do better... a couple of thoughts from my notebook this morning (I'm at the HOW Design Conference squirming with the constant contact of my own reflection):

"Millions of people are
smarter than you
and more clever
and
what does it get us?

Bitter determination to continue to try to be more clever next time?

TRY TO:
be smarter
more clever

BUT

try to
do something that matters"

That's what it comes down to: start with a purpose. What you do to be smart and clever beyond that is icing on the cake.

the problem with HOW

I am coming close to a crossroads of crisis. Sound melodramatic? It may be. I'm not sure how else to put it. I have been aware for going on two years that design may not actually be my thing.

So, I am aware of this but continue to strive to do good work in my discipline, to find work in my discipline, to succeed and be happy in my discipline. It's been a little rocky over the last couple of years, no coincidence. I left the creative department that I built to see if I could be a creative director at an advertising / design studio and was heartbroken when the owner turned out to be a piece of shit who ran the company into the ground three months after I started. Freelancing and unemployment tested my commitment to the world of design quite a bit. I finally got a corporate job that pays a living wage, but now I live as a creative janitor.

One of the perks of working for the big corporation is that they can afford to send me to a conference in my discipline. So, I jumped at the chance to come to HOW in Boston. I thought, I'll get a little creative juice, mix with my peers, see a couple of friends, have a good time.

Here's the thing: I think if I have to listen to another designer tell me about their process or their challenges or their portfolio or any other way tell me how fucking cool they think they are, I may just pierce my eardrums with a free-crap pen.

"Uh-oh!", right? What the hell am I doing at a design conference if I can't stand other designers?

ok, so

I think it's obvious that I am not the average blogger. That is to say, I suck as a "blogger." I'm pretty OK with that as a rule. However, I read over my recent posts and they're all over the place. The problem is, I don't have time to write when I really have something to write about. I also don't want to devolve into the "me on display" bullshit I see in a lot of other people's blogs. The blogs I actually read are the ones who provide a personal perspective on something else that might be interesting. I think I can do that, even in a de facto personal blog.

HOW design conference

I have some time on my hands while I am at the HOW Design Conference in Boston. Yay, right? I am not much of a blogger, to be sure, but I'll see what kinds of posts come out of this experience. I am sitting in the lobby of the Westin Hotel Copley Place, waiting for a room to be available. The hotels in Boston are slammed this weekend due to lots of college graduation activity in addition to the conference and probably the beginning of the tourist season. I had to stay in the 'burbs my first night here since there was nothing available in town. I made it down to Boston a little too early this morning, though... and now I wait. I went to register at the convention center, but my first event is not until 2 and it's 11:30 AM now.

kernel panic

The undercurrent of my thoughts is suffering a long, slow, unfocused distress. My achievements have slipped behind my goals so far in the last year that I can't reconcile my effort with them anymore. My career has been the loss leader for everything else; last year at this time I took a big step and left the corporate in-house creative services department that I built in order to work at a small studio that needed a creative director. It looked good on paper but was a fucking disaster -- the owner was stealing from the operating fund and the studio closed three months after I started. I was unemployed for five months, floundering through ideas about what to do next, thinking that maybe I wanted to get the hell out of the creative/production business anyway. All of that thinking led me exactly nowhere, though I tried to be upbeat and optimistic and look at it as an opportunity instead of a total clusterfuck. My wife also did not work, so we were just barely stringing together mortgage payments with the little freelance work I did and unemployment benefits. I finally, desperately, accepted a shit job with a fairly stable company in order to have SOME income and benefits. As it turns out, the folks who hired me apparently had no idea how or what they were going to use me for and basically abandoned me in a cube for the last four months.

So, I have had a lot of time to atrophy and think depressing thoughts and basically get nothing done. I am getting to the point where having no direction and no real motivation other than a paycheck is starting to make me anxious; for the last four months I have just looked at this job as kind of a break from the hard, constant work and stress I used to suffer, but now I realize that it's stifling any more comprehensive analysis of the situation or executive problem-solving functions in my brain.

The rest of my life is fine; my wife is enjoying success in graduate school and in her part-time job, and the kids are great. But I am getting run down by my situation at work. I don't have the energy to go start over as a graphic janitor, thinking I might be a creative lead in this company someday. I need something ELSE.

waiting for the day

with nausea and trepidation

when they take all the men in plaid shirts out to be shot

as a message to the rest of grown male humanity

that plaid is no longer as safe a fashion choice as they thought.

I hope I am not on the cusp of laundry day when the revolution comes.